Cargo Cults in Information Systems Development: a Definition and an Analytical Framework

Organizations today adopt agile information systems development methods (ISDM), but many do not succeed with the adoption process and in achieving desired results. Systems developers sometimes fail in efficient use of ISDM, often due to a lack of understanding the fundamental intentions of the chosen method. In many cases organizations simply imitate the behavior of others without really understanding why. This conceptual paper defines this phenomenon as an ISDM cargo cult behavior and proposes an analytical framework to identify such situations. The concept of cargo cults originally comes from the field of social anthropology and has been used to explain irrational, ritualistic imitation of certain behavior. By defining and introducing the concept in the field of information systems development we provide a diagnostic tool to better understand one of the reasons why ISDM adoption sometimes fail

The republic of science and its citizens: what role may humanities play within the popperian framework?

This essay aims at underlining Ian Jarvie’s specific contribution to the study of some of Karl Popper’s ideas in The Poverty of Historicism. It will also show how he goes further than Popper. Jarvie acknowledges the difficulty of writing about Popper’s view of the differences between the natural and the social sciences because Popper never addresses the critique of anti-naturalistic doctrines. He offers instead a critique of methodological essentialism and an apology of a certain nominalism. Popper shares these two ideas with Friedrich A. Hayek; however, Popper minimizes Hayek’s subjectivism of the social sciences. Looking through Hayek’s subjectivism, this chapter argues that the difference in method is greater than it seems, and that something akin to a Republic of Letters should be built alongside the Republic of Science, without ignoring the inherent faults in these republics that Jarvie underlines.Universidad de Navarrainfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio